1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technology for delivering data in a data delivery system.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, a data delivery system is used to process data in a specified manner and deliver the processed data to another system. For example, in a data delivery system, a tag image file format (TIFF) image data can be read by using a multifunction product (MFP) having various functions such as printing, scanning, and facsimile, subjected to bitmap (BMP) conversion and optical character recognition (OCR) processing, and delivered to another system via an e-mail.
FIG. 17 is a diagram for explaining an exemplary workflow of data delivery in a conventional data delivery system. FIG. 18 is a diagram for explaining an exemplary workflow in which one or more of workflow processing jobs are processed in a different system. A workflow is a sequence of workflow processing jobs performed in a data delivery system.
It is possible for a user to define a workflow in such a way that only a specific workflow processing job such as an OCR processing job is processed in a separate system (refer to FIG. 18). For example, in a conventional data delivery system shown in FIG. 19, an MFP 500 reads TIFF image data and sends the TIFF image data and a corresponding workflow to a data delivery server 600 from. The data delivery server 600 converts the TIFF image data into BMP image data and delivers the BMP data to a separate system 700 for OCR processing. The workflow can be defined such that the separate system 700 returns the OCR-processed data to the data delivery server 600 and the data delivery server 600 delivers the OCR-processed data to a file transfer protocol (FTP) mail server via an e-mail. Such a configuration facilitates in achieving a certain degree of load sharing of workflow processing jobs between a plurality of apparatuses and systems.
Moreover, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2005-56115 discloses a workflow related device that enables to set up independent sessions of a plurality of workflow systems to eliminate system-dependency between the workflow systems. Furthermore, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. H11-219393 discloses a workflow support system in which processing of an electronic document can be requested to a substitutional user if an administrator of a system workflow is absent.
However, the data delivery server 600 in the conventional data delivery system needs to manage all the workflow processing jobs in a workflow. More particularly, the data delivery server 600 first delivers the workflow to the separate system 700 for OCR processing and obtains back the OCR-processed data from the separate system 700. The data delivery server 600 then performs e-mail delivery of the OCR-processed data. Thus, although some load sharing of workflow processing jobs is possible by using the separate system 700, the data delivery server 600 does not become free until all the workflow processing jobs are complete. That prevents efficient load sharing of workflow processing jobs.
Moreover, it is not possible to request a substitutional user midway through a workflow to perform a workflow processing job.